Saturday, I went on a hike with my house mates to Naksan Park, which has a pretty easy trail and the Iwha Mural Village which is SUPER artsy and cute. I highly recommend going with someone and spending the day browsing through the local shops (it's at the beginning of the vlog).
More important was the start of classes. I was placed into L2 which I am a little conflicted about. I know all of the grammar structures in the 2A textbook already, so much of that will be review. However, I guess it doesn't hurt to practice speaking more. I feel like I could have studied hard and gotten the vocab and grammar for L2 down, but my speaking would probably not be up to par for L3. I feel that there is kind of large gap between L2 and L3 based on the abilities of some of my classmates (I see a wide range of skill level in L2).
But the real classroom is outside, amirite?! Seriously though, living in a share house has been a super helpful experience, for Korean is basically the lingua franca of the house and I get to use it a lot with my house mates. In fact, we all had dinner together a few nights ago and it was incredible to see the diversity. We were jumping from language to language, English, Korean, Japanese, and even Hindi. Definitely one of the coolest experiences I've had so far. I also have a language buddy through a program in my share house, and I can tell meeting her so often will help me improve as well.
A note on speaking to strangers:
It usually goes one of two ways, they hear you speak Korean and are super impressed (like seriously amazed even though it's pretty basic stuff) or they try speaking in English. Now I had heard some past Light fellows talk about the latter as if it were an issue, but I personally don't think it is. They usually speak English in touristy areas so they're just trying to help, and I usually don't switch over to English to reply (I'm not sure why, I just don't). I guess what frustrates me is walking around, obviously standing out, and knowing that at first sight, people probably don't expect me to know Korean. Sometimes I just want to shout something out in Korean to "prove myself" which leads me to my next point, perception.
I never realized how often we judge until I came here. Just as some people might assume I am a clueless foreigner (I'm not saying they do necessarily), I also assume that they can't speak English, or that they fall into other stereotypes I've unintentionally created of Korean people. I think I am being a little too cognizant of what people must think of me here, but sometimes it has this extreme rebound effect where I feel SO different that it actually makes me even more confident to walk around and just be like "yeah, this is who I am." Most likely though, people aren't thinking about me as much as I think they are. It still makes me appreciate America as a mixing pot though, for being a minority there is one thing, but being one here is completely different.
In other news, I've made some friends at Sogang and also have a solid group of Yalies I do stuff with. We've gotten close super fast. The day after we met, we went to Hangang Park to celebrate a friend's birthday. The lights, the people, the atmosphere was just so fresh. Seoul really is a city built for youth. The Light blog prompt for this week was about whether we went out of our comfort zone or visited tourist sites, but honestly, I do those things everyday. Everyday I go out to explore and see a new place. And everyday I pull out my Naver dictionary and muster the courage to ask something. So far it feels like it'll never get old. Let's hope it stays that way for a while.
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